The Distribution of Animals

Abstract

DURING the present century, the study of the distribution of animals has entered upon a new phase, marked by a more intense examination of the relationship between animals and their environment, and a desire to bring to the understanding of distribution a physiological point of view applied to communities as well as to individual species and systematic groups. As regards land animals the older works, of Murray, Wallace, Heilprin, Troussart, Beddard, Lydekker, Sclater and others, were based largely upon the knowledge of mammals and birds, and these warm-blooded animals were less obviously subject to several climatic factors which regulate the distribution of less specialized animals ; whereas, as regards marine organisms, from the time of Edward Forbes, the tendency had been to accumulate data of distribution with reference to 'zones' or other generalized areas. (1) Ecological Animal Geography An authorized, rewritten edition based on “Tier-geographie auf œkologischer Grundlage” by Prof. Richard Hesse. Prepared by W. C. Allee and Karl P. Schmidt. Pp. xiv + 597. (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.; London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1937.) 30s. net. (2) Animal Communities in Temperate America: as illustrated in the Chicago Region—a Study in Animal Ecology. By Victor E. Shelford. (Geographic Society of Chicago, Bulletin No. 5.) Second edition. Pp. xiii + 368. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press ; London: Cambridge University Press, 1937.) 13s. 6d. net.